Framing and Underground Pipes

Now this place is finally looking like something.  All the framing for the rooms is finished.  It took the framer about 4 days.  We filled in 3 exterior doors and 3 windows.  We were able to to recycle one of the windows and put it in an old door opening.  Yay for saving money and being creative.

We have also dug up the master bathroom concrete and installed the pipes for the new bathroom.

Next up is to call the city and have it inspected.  Cross your fingers for me that it gets approved.

Then it's time to put in the overhead pipes in, the drywall, and some new insulation.  It's getting closer.

Electircal

Blah, what a pain in the ass!  I got bids ranging from $9,000 to $2,500.  I'm now finished with the rough.  Which means all the wires and electrical boxes that get installed before the drywall gets filled in.

I didn't imagine all the decisions and organization that would be needed for this part of the project.  I guess a lot of the goes into the fact I went with the $2500 bid and not the $9000.  After all is said and done though I think it's going to be pretty sweet.  The house is going to have 20 can lights and 30 feet of track lighting that all use dimmable led bulbs.  There should also be enough outlets so that no more fights with my girlfriend about whose hogging the plugs break out.

Week 3 Update

It's been around 3 weeks since work started at the house.  The first week was really productive with the demoing of basically the entire inside.  All the walls and the flooring have been removed with the exception of the bathrooms and one room that will stay as it is. I've even managed to fill in a 650 sq. ft.2 inch dip in the living room. If everything continued at this pace I could see the whole house being finished in 5 to 6 weeks.

but........now that's it's time to start adding I need to get permits.  I hired a really experienced drafter permit expert to draw up the plans.  I guess you need 7 different types of plans to get a permit (electrical, plumbing, demo, wall, ect. ect.).  We just finalized the plans at the end of week 3.  Now he will take the plans to the city, and cross my fingers nothing goes wrong, the permits will go through the city process and in two more weeks I will be able to build my house.

Let's hope everything goes as planned tomorrow.  I'll keep you posted.

Demo Stage

I have had so many thoughts about how I wanted the layout of the house to be and was constantly changing my "perfect floor plan" when new bits of information came in.  The first real solid decision I made was where to put the kitchen.

That decision was made after I did a full day of research at the City of Phoenix permit and zoning building.  After lots of questions and an understandably frustrated city zoning employee there was really only one place I could place a two car carport and nowhere I could place a garage unless I wanted to build a free standing 1 car garage (which is expensive and I really want two car parking).

I found out the carport must get placed on the North side of the house so the kitchen needs to be placed close to the carport.  So most of my favorite floor plan ideas needed to be scrapped.  But after talking it through with some friends and family I came up with a pretty great floor plan and went ahead with the demoing of the old tile and walls.

Below are some before and after pictures.

Before the demo pictures (taken before I owned it while tenants are living in it.):

During and After Demo:

First Thoughts and Layout

I took about 8 months until I officially purchased the duplex.  This duplex was in preatty great shape and really setup preatty well as far as duplex's go.  One side was a two bedroom, one bathroom unit. The other side was a three bedroom, one bathroom.

I've never done anything like this before and I'm not all that handy and don't have lots of money to burn.  Creativity and patience are is what I'm banking on.  The fact that this was a duplex made me hopefully that many of the pieces will work together.

The first thing I did was create a rough floorplan of the duplex.  Which looks like this.

The room names without a box are unit A.  The boxed names are Unit B's rooms.

The Story

This whole thing happened in a pretty strange way.  I found a duplex that I really liked in a great neighborhood.  I planned on buying the duplex as an investment and with a whole lot of bumps and turns it seemed like it was finally going to happen.  Then the dreaded appraisal came, which always seems to stimey me every time,  It turns out that this perfectly to code duplex was never zoned to be a duplex (even though in all the tax records it was a duplex).

So it couldn't be purchase or legally used as a duplex.  After a temper tantrum and a few days to think about it I came back and said I still wanted to purchase the house and I will convert it to my new home.

And so the steps I took to renovate a duplex into a single family home will be written in this blog.  Wish me luck!